Side projects stall because the boring parts — auth, forms, payment integration, deployment config — drain motivation before the interesting stuff gets built. Claude Code fixes that. Those boring parts are exactly where it works fastest.
Build the boring parts first
Conventional wisdom says validate first, build MVP, don't code until you know people want it. That's right for commercial products.
For side projects the real problem is different: most die because you run out of motivation before they're done. The fix: use Claude to do the boring infrastructure work at the start, so all that's left is the interesting stuff.
Auth, database schema, deployment pipeline, payment integration — give Claude these tasks first. They're tedious to write, Claude handles them well, and getting them done early means you can spend your motivated time on the actual product.
Timebox sessions to 90 minutes
Side project sessions should be short and focused. "I have 90 minutes, let's finish the user profile page" produces a concrete deliverable. "I have some time, let's work on the project" produces meandering progress that's hard to pick up next session.
Claude Code is good at focused, scoped work. Give it a specific thing to finish, work together for 90 minutes, ship what you built, stop.
Use CLAUDE.md as a project journal
Side projects have weeks or months between sessions. When you come back after a break, you've forgotten the decisions you made.
Add a decisions section to CLAUDE.md:
## Decisions
- Using Supabase instead of Prisma because [reason]
- Server-side rendering for dashboard because [reason]
- Deferred mobile layout to v2
When you start a new session months later, you and Claude both know where you left off and why.
The feature that always kills momentum
Every side project has one: more complicated than expected, sucks up three weekends without getting done.
When you hit it, scope down. Ask Claude: "What's the simplest version of this that I could ship?" Then ship that. The perfect version can wait for v2 — which may never happen, and that's fine.
More on working with Claude Code: builtbyzac.com/blog.html
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